Inferno · Canto XXIII ·
Inferno XXIII — The Flight From the Malebranche
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 23 of 100 · Inferno, Canto XXIII
Before reading
This is the canto in which the pilgrim and his guide get out from under one set of devils and into the punishment of a sin so common and so quiet that the Commedia gives it one of its most striking visual inventions. The bolgia of the hypocrites is the sixth of Malebolge, and the canto is built around an image that will stay with the reader longer than the names of the sinners in it.
Where the canto sits
Canto XXIII opens with the pilgrim still inside the fifth bolgia — the ditch of the corrupt politicians, the barrators, presided over by the comic-grotesque squadron of devils called the Malebranche. The two previous cantos were the Commedia's longest excursion into low comedy: bad devils tripping over each other, a barrator escaping by trickery, the squad's leader pratfalling into hot pitch. The reader has been encouraged to laugh, and the laughter has begun to feel uncomfortable. Canto XXIII is in part the poem's correction of its own register. The escape from the devils is sudden, urgent, almost slapstick — and then the descent into the next bolgia drops the temperature absolutely.
What it helps to know
The hypocrites are made to walk forever in cloaks that are gilded on the outside and lined with lead. The image is precise. Dante is borrowing a slander attached to the Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250), one of the most powerful and most hated rulers of the previous century, who was rumoured to have executed traitors by sealing them in lead capes and melting them around the body. The hypocrites' cloaks are the same image emptied of its violence and stretched out across eternity: a gleam on the outside, a crushing weight within, exactly the structure of the sin.
Two of the souls the pilgrim meets are named. Catalano dei Malavolti and Loderingo degli Andalò were members of an order called the Frati Gaudenti — the "Jovial Friars" — a Bolognese lay order founded in the mid-thirteenth century with the stated mission of mediating between the warring factions of the Italian cities. In 1266 the two of them were appointed jointly as podestà of Florence, theoretically as neutral peacekeepers. They were widely held to have favoured the Guelphs (and the papacy that backed them) and to have engineered the expulsion of the Ghibellines and the destruction of their houses. For Dante, writing as a Ghibelline-sympathising Florentine in exile, they are a perfect specimen of religious profession used as political cover. Their punishment — to wear the gilded lead of false outward devotion — is the point of the canto in compressed form.
At the bottom of the bolgia the pilgrim sees a figure crucified to the ground, trampled by every passing hypocrite. He is named only by description, but the canto makes the identification unmistakable. Sit with the image before the analysis names it.
What to read for
Listen for the change in tone in the opening tercets. The two cantos before this were noisy and crowded; this one starts in silence, the two poets walking as go the Minor Friars along their way. The simile — the Franciscans walking in line — is the first warning that this bolgia will be about the monastic look of holiness without its content.
Notice how the canto closes. Virgil is angry, and the source of his anger is a remark by one of the friars that pricks his own pride. Pay attention. The first sign that the guide is not the unshakeable authority canto I made him seem will come at moments like these, accumulating across the bolge.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto begins as a chase and ends as a procession, and in the change of pace the whole register of the Inferno shifts. The two cantos before this one had been the Commedia's broadest comedy — a squad of cartoon devils, a barrator escaping by trick, the chief Malebranche pratfalling into pitch — and the reader who has been laughing has been quietly implicated. Canto XXIII opens with Virgil suddenly anxious, snatches up the pilgrim like a mother saving a child from a burning house, and slides down the cliff into the next bolgia just as the devils break the ridge behind them. The escape is filmic, fast, almost slapstick in its turn — and then the floor of the sixth bolgia drops the temperature absolutely. The hypocrites move in single file under gilded cloaks lined with lead; they weep; they barely speak. The most striking visual invention in the whole Inferno is given to a sin the poem treats as the quietest and the most pervasive.
The gilded lead
The cloaks are an image so precise it carries the entire ethical argument. Hypocrisy is not a private vice the way lust is, or a public crime the way violence is; hypocrisy is the divergence between an outside and an inside. Dante gives the sin a body. The cloaks are dazzling on the surface — Without, they gilded are so that it dazzles — and crushing in their lining; the soul wears, eternally, the structure of its sin. The slander attached to Frederick II — that he had executed traitors by sealing them in lead capes and melting them around the body — is borrowed and stretched, the violence of the original taken out and the weight left in. The hypocrite is not killed by his cloak. He simply walks, forever, so tardily, that we were new / In company at each motion of the haunch.
The two friars
The two souls Dante names — Catalano dei Malavolti and Loderingo degli Andalò — are Bolognese, members of a chivalric-religious lay order with the operatic title Cavalieri di Santa Maria and the popular nickname Frati Gaudenti, the Jovial Friars. The order had been founded with the avowed mission of mediating between the warring factions of the Italian cities. In 1266 the two of them were appointed joint podestà of Florence — a divided office, theoretically held by a Guelph and a Ghibelline, in practice held by two men accused by the chronicles of working in concert for the papal party that backed them. Under their joint rule, the houses of the great Ghibelline family of the Uberti were torn down on the site where the present Piazza della Signoria stands. For Dante, a Ghibelline-sympathising Florentine in exile, the placement of the two friars in the gilded-lead procession is a piece of personal accounting. The religious profession was the gilding; the political work was the lead.
Caiaphas, and a punishment that does not move
At the bottom of the bolgia, the pilgrim sees a figure crucified flat to the ground by three stakes, and Catalan tells him without naming him that this is the one who counselled the Pharisees that it was meet / To put one man to torture for the people. Caiaphas, with Annas and the rest of the Sanhedrin nearby, is fixed in the floor of Hell so that every hypocrite passing above must tread on him and feel, / Whoever passes, first how much he weighs. The image works on several levels at once. Caiaphas is the originary hypocrite of the Christian story, the man who spoke a holy formula to authorise an unjust killing; his cloak is invisible because his sin was so naked. He is also fixed where the others walk, so that his punishment is the floor of theirs — the foundation on which all later hypocrisy stands. Virgil's reaction is one of the canto's most subtle notes: I saw Virgilius marvel / O'er him who was extended on the cross / So vilely in eternal banishment. The Roman shade has never been in this part of Hell before. The state of the sixth bolgia, with its crucified high priest, is new ground even for him — and the poem is quietly insisting, again, that there are things Virgil does not know.
Virgil's anger
The canto closes on a small private bruise. The friar Catalan, asked the way out, points to a broken bridge — broken, the reader is invited to realise, in the earthquake at the Crucifixion — and adds the comment that Many of the Devil's vices / Once heard I at Bologna, and among them. / That he's a liar and the father of lies. The line is a pointed reference to the false intelligence Malacoda gave Virgil two cantos earlier (the lie about the unbroken bridge that almost trapped them with the devils). Virgil's response is to walk away with great strides… somewhat disturbed with anger in his looks. He has been corrected, mildly, by a damned hypocrite. The authoritative guide of canto I is beginning to show a thinner skin than that opening tribute suggested. The reader is being trained to listen for the small failures of Virgilian poise — they will multiply through the lower circles.
Famous and meaningful passages
The opening simile.
Silent, alone, and without company We went, the one in front, the other after, As go the Minor Friars along their way. (Inf. XXIII.1–3)
The two poets are likened to Franciscan friars walking in line. The simile is the canto's first hint that the bolgia ahead will be about the monastic look of holiness — and that the pilgrim and his guide, however unwillingly, are arriving in costume.
The cloaks named.
A painted people there below we found, Who went about with footsteps very slow, Weeping and in their semblance tired and vanquished. They had on mantles with the hoods low down Before their eyes, and fashioned of the cut That in Cologne they for the monks are made. Without, they gilded are so that it dazzles; But inwardly all leaden and so heavy That Frederick used to put them on of straw. O everlastingly fatiguing mantle! (Inf. XXIII.58–67)
The single most efficient picture of a sin anywhere in the Inferno. Notice the exclamation in the last line — the narrator can no longer keep silent; the image breaks his composure.
Caiaphas crucified.
But said no more; for to mine eyes there rushed One crucified with three stakes on the ground. When me he saw, he writhed himself all over, Blowing into his beard with suspirations; And the Friar Catalan, who noticed this, Said to me: This transfixed one, whom thou seest, Counselled the Pharisees that it was meet To put one man to torture for the people. Crosswise and naked is he on the path, As thou perceivest; and he needs must feel, Whoever passes, first how much he weighs. (Inf. XXIII.109–119)
The high priest is not named, only described — Dante's habit of damnation by description rather than label. The phrase he needs must feel, / Whoever passes, first how much he weighs is the canto's ethical sentence in eleven words: every hypocrite who passes above must press the originary hypocrite further into the rock.
Virgil's astonishment.
And thereupon I saw Virgilius marvel O'er him who was extended on the cross So vilely in eternal banishment. (Inf. XXIII.124–126)
The Roman shade has not seen Caiaphas before. The poem is careful to record this — Virgil's knowledge of Hell, presented in canto I as absolute, is in fact bounded by what was visible to a pagan in the year 19 BC. Caiaphas was crucified after the Crucifixion. Virgil is meeting him here for the first time.
The friar's barb.
Many of the Devil's vices Once heard I at Bologna, and among them. That he's a liar and the father of lies. (Inf. XXIII.142–144)
A damned hypocrite, smiling, lectures Virgil on the deceitfulness of devils. The line refers obliquely to the trick Malacoda played on Virgil in canto XXI. It is the first time in the Inferno that a soul of Hell scores a point against the guide.
The closing image.
Thereat my Leader with great strides went on, Somewhat disturbed with anger in his looks; Whence from the heavy-laden I departed After the prints of his beloved feet. (Inf. XXIII.145–148)
Virgil walks away angry. Dante follows after the prints of his beloved feet — the worship language of canto I held tenderly intact even as the worshipped figure begins to crack at the edges.
What to watch for
Watch for the broken bridges. Catalan reveals here that the entire arch of bridges across the sixth bolgia collapsed in the earthquake at the Crucifixion — geographical evidence, planted in the architecture of Hell, of the moment when the harrowing took place. The earthquake will be felt again in canto XXI's geology and at the bottom of Hell in canto XXXIV.
Watch Virgil's composure. From here downward, the guide's failures of knowledge and temper will accumulate. Canto XXIII is the first time a damned soul makes him bristle. By the bottom of the pit, his authority will have been thoroughly recoded — and the recoding begins, quietly, in a friar's parting remark.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.